Practicing the Power of Now – 1.01.15 (The Origin of Fear)

Practicing the Power of Now – 1.01.15 (The Origin of Fear)

What are you afraid of? Spiders now right! I apologize in advance for the image for this post, ha! It could be a phobia of swallowing spiders in your sleep (Don’t fret! Swallowing Spiders while you sleep), the inability for the volume on a stereo to be an odd number (is that just me?), or an unease of your closet not being organized by the color spectrum (ROY G BIV ya’ll!). Fear can be funny. Fear can also be absolutely horrific.

The interesting way to look at fear is that it is always rooted in the future. We may be fearful of a possibility … a statistic that we heard on the news. We may be fearful of an act happening a second time to ourselves or a close family member or friend. Regardless, these two scenarios are rooted in the future. There is a chance that these acts will never manifest. Our minds are driven to the point of insanity with “what if’s” and “it could happen to me.” We cannot cope with that outcome.

Death. Fear comes from the thought of ourselves or someone losing their life. Our minds will go to any lengths to preserve our lives. So any time we lose an argument, come in second place, or miss out on a potential new job, our minds equate this as death. I ask that we take a moment and look at how our minds interpret this. If the thought of an argument can be interpreted as death in the mind, then is what we’re arguing about worth that neural disposition?

In the Now, we have an opportunity to address fear. Fear has no place in the present. It reigns over the future. We’re not there yet. So why not enjoy the beauty that is the Now and bask in the strength we have within ourselves.

Practicing the Power of Now – The Origin of Fear

“The psychological condition of fear is divorced from any concrete and true immediate danger. It comes in many forms: unease, worry, anxiety, nervousness, tension, dread, phobia and so on. You are in the here and now, while your mind is in the future. This creates an anxiety gap. You cannot cope with the future.”

“For example, even such a seemingly trivial and ‘normal’ thing as the compulsive need to be right in an argument and make the other person wrong – defending the mental position with which you have identified – is due to the fear of death. If you identify with a mental position, then if you are wrong, your mind-based sense of self is seriously threatened with annihilation. So you as the ego cannot afford to be wrong. To be wrong is to die.”

“Watch out for any kind of defensiveness within yourself. What are you defending? An illusory identity, an image in your mind, a fictitious entity. By making this pattern conscious, by witnessing it, you disidentify from it. In the light of your consciousness, the unconscious pattern will then quickly dissolve. This is the end of all arguments and power games, which are so corrosive to relationships. Power over others is weakness disguised as strength. True power is within, and it is available to you now.”